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On January 5, in a couple of days, the most anticipated local elections for many years will be held in the United States. In fact, Georgia, a traditionally conservative state in the south, will be voted on for the ballots necessary to elect the two senators who will represent the state in the federal Senate in the new legislature, which begins Jan.3. The two elections will continue in this way because they will greatly affect the ambitions of the new Democratic administration of Joe Biden, which in the November elections defeated outgoing Republican President Donald Trump.
If both elections were won by the Democratic candidates, the two main parties would control 50 senators each. In the event of a tie, however, the Senate regulations establish that the person who presides over the classroom can also vote: that is the vice president of the United States, who in the next legislature will be Kamala Harris, also a Democrat.
Ultimately, in the event of a victory for both seats, the Democrats would take control of both the White House, both the House (which won in the 2018 by-elections and managed to retain those of the 2nd), and indeed the Senate. , giving Biden the ability to more easily implement his political agenda. On the contrary, by winning even one of the two seats at stake, the Republicans would retain control of the Senate by balancing the recent victories of the Democrats.
The Republicans have nominated the two outgoing senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, and are pouring a lot of money into the election campaign – and probably a few years ago they would have gotten both seats quite easily, given that the local Congress is firmly in the hands of the republicans. and Democrats have not been able to elect a senator in more than 15 years.
For some time, however, Georgia has been going through socioeconomic changes that have allowed Democrats to catch up, so much so that in the presidential election that just ended, Biden got more votes than Trump, and that in 2018 Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams – who later became one of the most recognizable faces of the party at the national level: he lost the election for the post of governor by only 55 thousand votes.
– Read also: Could Trump forgive himself?
The first round of the elections scheduled for January 5 was also highly contested: Perdue and his Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff were within 100,000 votes of about 5 million, but Perdue did not exceed 50 percent of the vote. necessary under state law to win in the first round, while Loeffler even finished second in an open election with more than twenty candidates, won by Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock. Both elections are so in the balance that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are spending money in the polls, preferring to invest it in the actual campaign.
Who are the candidates
None of the four candidates have a long political career behind them, but the two Republicans remain the most experienced. David perdue He was elected to the Senate in 2014, almost eight points behind the Democratic candidate, Michelle Nunn, after a career as a manager in several quite famous companies, such as the Reebok clothing company (where he was also vice president). Before entering politics, he was CEO of Dollar General, a famous American chain of small supermarkets. During his tenure as a senator, he was most famous for his stock market transactions, which attracted him various controversies and accusations of insider trading, none of which have had legal consequences thus far.
the New York Times found that in his six years as Senator Perdue completed 2,596 operations, about a third of those performed by all Senate members in the same time frame. “The data also shows that Perdue has invested in several companies that benefit from the decisions made by the Senate and in particular by the commissions and subcommittees of which it was a member,” added the New York Times.
Kelly loeffler Instead, she has been in office since January 2020, when Georgia Governor Brian Kemp appointed her pro tempore senator to replace Johnny Isakson, who resigned before the end of his term for health reasons. Loeffler is the first woman to serve as a senator in Georgia, in addition to a symbolic appointment dating back to 1922, and she is a successful manager and businesswoman well known in Republican circles: Forbes considers her “the richest person to work in Congress” (her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is the president of the New York Stock Exchange), but in recent years she has become known primarily as the owner of the basketball team. Atlanta Dream in the NBA women’s league.
Loeffler has called herself the most right-wing senator in the entire Senate and, along with Perdue, is one of the twenty Republican senators who have voted most frequently in favor of Trump’s proposed measures. Both, in the election campaign, supported Trump’s unfounded accusations of alleged fraud that occurred nationally and in Georgia.
Left to right: Loeffler, Perdue and Ivanka Trump during a recent election event in Milton, Georgia (Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images)
The two Democratic candidates, on the other hand, have very little political experience and are very different from each other. Jon OssoffWhat a challenge! Perdue, he is only 33 years old and in his life he worked as a collaborator of a deputy and at the head of a small English company that produces documentaries. He stood out in 2018 for narrowly losing one of the tightest House elections of that round. Those who know him describe him as a brilliant and talented person: in the election campaign Ossoff tried to sell himself above all as a firmly progressive but also pragmatic Democrat, equidistant from both the stereotype of the Democrat and a centrist southern state, according to the Republicans. in almost everything, both from the left wing of the party.
Raphael warnock Instead, he is a fairly well-known figure in Georgia, despite his early political experience. In fact, since 2005 he is pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atalanta, the historic parish of Martin Luther King, very influential in the populous African-American community of the state. In recent years, Warnock has often devoted himself to causes beloved by Democrats such as expanding health coverage for the poorest, registering minority citizens to vote, greater control over gun owners in the United States. fire; Over the years he has also made highly controversial statements that have been used against him in recent weeks, such as when he said in 2011 that no one can serve “God and the military at the same time.”
Ossoff on the left and Warnock on the right, pictured during a recent election event in Stonecrest, Georgia (Jessica McGowan / Getty Images)
What was talked about during the electoral campaign
Republican candidates have mostly focused on keeping the votes of voters most loyal to Trump, while defending the outgoing president’s most surreal arguments and battles, including completely overriding the roughly five million votes cast in Georgia in the presidential elections.
As part of this effort, they are insisting on the importance of maintaining Republican control over the Senate and trying to paint their Democratic opponents as dangerous extremists, focusing primarily on Warnock and his controversial positions. In the only debate between Loeffler and Warnock in early December, the incumbent senator referred to her opponent as “the left wing extremist Raphael Warnock” instead of using his current title, pastor.
Here’s a compilation of Senator Kelly Loeffler saying “Radical Liberal Raphael Warnock” in tonight’s debate: pic.twitter.com/vCc5PXVLRW
– Martin Samoylov (@martin_samoylov) December 7, 2020
Democratic candidates, on the other hand, have been very insistent on their election to fully implement President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda and on the controversies of his opponents: Ossoff often calls Perdue “a corrupt man,” both in his speeches and in his speeches. polling places.
In recent days, there has been talk above all about the new package of economic measures to balance the consequences of the coronavirus that is being debated in Congress. Perdue and Loeffler had praised the Republicans’ proposal to include a check for $ 600 for each person, as decided on other occasions in recent months; The Democrat-controlled House, however, had proposed passing a much higher check, for about $ 2,000, and Trump surprisingly supported their request (only to approve the $ 600 pledge at a later time).
The two Republican senators thus found themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to choose whether to support the Democratic measure and stay aligned with Trump, or to choose the most conservative position of the party, which is supporting their electoral campaign by making available a large amount of media and means.
Polls and data on early voting
Ballots are among the most difficult elections to predict, explains the New York TimesBoth candidates must simultaneously try to convince their constituents to vote for them again and attract those who chose another candidate in the first round or did not vote. Both Georgia elections also turned into two of the most funded local elections in US history, adding more unpredictability.
Furthermore, as the first round and the presidential elections have shown, both seats will likely be decided by a few tens of thousands of votes. To win, the two Republican candidates will have to keep the entire electoral base loyal to Trump and convince some moderates scared by the possibility of Democrats controlling all the major places of power in national politics. The Democratic candidates, on the other hand, will once again have to count on the support of the growing ethnic minorities – who today constitute about half of the state’s population, and in November were mobilized mainly by the structures installed by Stacey Abrams -, to the increasingly young and leftist population that lives in Atlanta, and in the suburbs vote, which according to some analyzes was the main culprit of Trump’s defeat in the presidential elections.
Regarding early voting, so far more than 3 million people have voted for the two seats: the percentage of African American voters at this time is slightly higher than the figures registered in the same period in the presidential elections -32% against 30- but Five thirty eight He explains that these figures are of little consequence, given that any small advantage of the Democrats could be offset by the massive vote in the presence of the Republicans on January 5, as happened in part in the last presidential elections.
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